Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings

[AutoAdmin]

Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

[Litude]

If I had counted the countless hours I have spent playing this game, I'm sure I'd be up in tens of thousands of hours. Got it shortly after release and been playing more or less actively ever since.

Think the RTS formula can't get much better than what it is like in this game. A very nice variety of units, with a bunch of civilizations each also having their own unique unit. The realistic scale of buildings approach also make units seem smaller and somehow gives a feeling of being in better control of what's going on that in the previous entry in the game. Not to mention the ever so convenient formations have been implemented.

Also, for 256 color graphics you can't possibly be asking for anything more than this. The graphics are pretty much the finest 2D RTS graphics I've seen coupled together with a nice soundtrack and sound effects that vary depending on which civilization you play and you got all the stuff you need to create a completely engulfing historical RTS experience.

The single-player experience has also been improved a lot from the predecessor, with the campaigns having all these narrative slideshow kind of intros with a voice actor trying to mimic the accent of the people in question in the campaign. As the game also has this trigger kind of scripting system for scenarios, it allows the campaigns to be much more interesting than just some random map with a bunch of text given to you at the beginning to set the back story. This also allows for a variety of things to be done in the scenario editor. People have even made RPG scenarios using the game's scenario editor.

Simply put, it pretty much addresses all the flaws in the original game and the result is one hell of a package.

By the way, I have Japanese versions of both the Age of Empires and the Age of Empires II demos. Do you carry international versions of games?

[MrFlibble]

The Age of Kings was more positively received by both the gaming community and the critics than the first Age of Empires game. The developers upgraded almost everything in the game, greatly improved the visuals (the terrain elevation graphics weren't especially good in the previous game), streamlined game play, modified the tech tree to remove weak points make it a bit more sensible (e.g. all weapon upgrades are now done in the blacksmith, and not scattered throughout seemingly unrelated structures like the storage pit or the market like in Age of Empires), and ade the AI more challenging. Yet essentially The Age of Kings uses the same engine as its predecessor, and game play stayed the same in many aspects. Even though each civilization in The Age of Kings has a unique unit or two, as well as unique Wonder graphics, the bulk of the units is shared among all civilisations, although various "team bonuses" might strengthen or weaken a particular unit, or determine the preferences towards units of a particular type (and associated playing tactics) for each civilization. This compromise between the generalised tech tree scheme on the one hand and unique civilization features on the other has become characteristic of the first two games of the series, and although it serves game balance to some extent, it also somewhat detracts from historical accuracy. Many units' appearance feels out of place with some civilizations, as is with the European-looking monks commanded by an Asian or Middle Eastern civilization. This could have been remedied by adding civilization-specific unit designs, as it was in part realized in The Conquerors add-on. Somewhat surprising is that the Byzantine civilization shares its architectural style with the Middle Eastern civilizations; also, Byzantine units speak Latin, although Greek would have probably been more appropriate.

Unlike the first game, the historical reference is now built into the game engine, and supplied by nicely drawn illustrations. However, I had the feeling that the descriptions have become less detailed than in Age of Empires, where historical background was provided for each structure, unit and technology, not just general topics like civilizations and epochs. The game's campaigns are centred around historical figures like William Wallace, Joan of Arc or Barbarossa (as opposed to the campaigns in the first game, which could span over long periods of a civilization's history, and episodically feature characters and events separated by hundreds of years from each other), and are well put together through voiced-over narration between missions. The stories in the campaigns focus mostly on the history of Medieval Europe, and the eventful Asian history of the same period is almost completely left out; this is somewhat remedied in the add-on, where there is one Japanese and one Korean mission.

All in all, The Age of Kings is probably the best of what the engine and the game play scheme that was originally developed has to offer. It can be speculated that the developers would have improved the game even further if it were not for the pressure of time, with the release of the game already delayed (they had to make The Rise of Rome to fill the gap of the yet incomplete AoK). As with the first Age of Empires, some improvements to AoK's balance, interface and game play came with its add-on, The Conquerors, but obviously no critical changes were made. If compared to the first game, The Age of Kings and its expansion have become more standardized so to speak, probably because the game got more and more fine-tuned and balanced for the online multi-player mode.

[Litude]

Unlike the first game, the historical reference is now built into the game engine, and supplied by nicely drawn illustrations. However, I had the feeling that the descriptions have become less detailed than in Age of Empires, where historical background was provided for each structure, unit and technology, not just general topics like civilizations and epochs.

I think the provided manual still had quite some stuff regarding units and buildings. Anyway, having as much information presented in the illustrated intros as the original game had would more than likely have made it a lot more cumbersome to follow the story than the summarized and sometimes a bit improvised representations of history the game used. After all, they couldn't assume that everyone playing the game would be interested in history, hence providing additional information in the history section and the manual.

It can be speculated that the developers would have improved the game even further if it were not for the pressure of time, with the release of the game already delayed (they had to make The Rise of Rome to fill the gap of the yet incomplete AoK).

Since it was delayed twice, you'd think they should've had more than enough time to get most of what they wanted done. Knowing when to stop is always one of the most difficult parts of game development (if the developers added everything they wanted, all games would have a development history similar to that of Duke Nukem Forever).

[MrFlibble]

I think the provided manual still had quite some stuff regarding units and buildings.

Oh yes, that's right, and it's just as detailed as in the first game, but the help file from AoE feels more integrated into the game itself (I think you can even click a "?" button in the game, then click on anything you'd like to get info about, and immediately an entry from the help file is brought up, just like it is with any regular Windows application that has the help function).

Since it was delayed twice, you'd think they should've had more than enough time to get most of what they wanted done. Knowing when to stop is always one of the most difficult parts of game development (if the developers added everything they wanted, all games would have a development history similar to that of Duke Nukem Forever).

Not long ago I've read in an article that the changes that were planned for AoK were much greater than what the final release had seen. Ore was supposed to be one of the resources, and gold would be only obtainable via trade, among other things. This probably just did not fit into balance or required too much polishing. Instead, changes were introduced that simplified the original economy in many aspects, like the ability to trade resources via markets (with enough wood and/or food, which is usually abundant, you can have an almost endless supply of gold), or the addition of fish traps that effectively made "natural" fishing almost entirely obsolete.

[Litude]

Oh yes, that's right, and it's just as detailed as in the first game, but the help file from AoE feels more integrated into the game itself (I think you can even click a "?" button in the game, then click on anything you'd like to get info about, and immediately an entry from the help file is brought up, just like it is with any regular Windows application that has the help function).

That help file was very convenient, but the inclusion of the roll-over help partly made up for the lack of this file in the sequel.

Not long ago I've read in an article that the changes that were planned for AoK were much greater than what the final release had seen. Ore was supposed to be one of the resources, and gold would be only obtainable via trade, among other things. This probably just did not fit into balance or required too much polishing. Instead, changes were introduced that simplified the original economy in many aspects, like the ability to trade resources via markets (with enough wood and/or food, which is usually abundant, you can have an almost endless supply of gold), or the addition of fish traps that effectively made "natural" fishing almost entirely obsolete.

Yeah they were toying with all kinds of stuff. Ore was supposed to be like gold is in the final game as you got the normal gold only by trading as you mentioned. They also planned to have growing forests, infinite farms, raider civilizations, more NPCs like outlaws who would steal the gold from any trade carts they came in contact with, infiltrators that could let you find out some nice stuff about your enemies and stuff like boarding galleys that were supposed to be the "monks" of sea. But it is my understanding that most if not all of these features were removed not because of time constraints, but because they just couldn't make them work in a way that was fun for the gamer.

The alpha I have still has the boarding galleys in the game and outlaws (they don't steal gold from trade carts though), but no remnants of the other features. The beta has both of those removed (but the dolphins and pointy hatted jannissaries are still in). I have been doing these kind of collections where I collect all pre-release articles and screenshots for both Age of Empires and its sequel.

[MrFlibble]

I've been looking through the MIDI files in the trial versions of both AoK and its expansion, and while almost all of the tracks have their titles in their "Properties" section, one tune from the expansion trial version is simply called "Untitled". Do you know if it has any other title?

It is also remarkable that quite a few tunes in AoK (I think even more than in AoE, actually) are either MIDI-only or CD-only, resulting in noticeable discrepancies between MIDI and CD versions of the soundtrack.

[Litude]

I can only think of one AoK track that is MIDI only, that one being Gyam Shorts. It was released on the official soundtrack as full quality but I and a couple of other people have been unable to track that one down.

Anyway, the track you're looking for is actually the second track on the AoK CD (it's all one big music file, but it starts att around 3:20). I'll see if I can find out the name of it.
EDIT: It's called "I Will Beat On Your Behind".

[MrFlibble]

Anyway, the track you're looking for is actually the second track on the AoK CD (it's all one big music file, but it starts att around 3:20). I'll see if I can find out the name of it.
EDIT: It's called "I Will Beat On Your Behind".

Cool, thanks I have the Platinum Edition, so the only CD tracks I've got are those from the Collector's Edition CD (which has a mixture of AoE and AoK tracks).